


You In Me In You

by Bakageta



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Other, Possession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:26:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24903040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakageta/pseuds/Bakageta
Summary: Eddie surfaces completely for the first time since Maria died on top of him and realizes where he is if not exactly how he got there.
Relationships: Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 23
Kudos: 91





	You In Me In You

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [sajastar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajastar) for betaing!
> 
> My contribution to Venom Fanworks Day! This fills the spot for Possession & Mind Control for my [bingo](https://bakageta.dreamwidth.org/288.html).

Eddie's on the floor in one of the most horrible places he's ever been ( _ **flashes of too cold**_ , _**too hot**_ , _**not enough**_ , _**and burning**_ , _**killing oxygen**_ ), and the wail of the tripped alarm seems like it's driving a rail spike straight into the back of his skull. None of that matters, though, because Maria is dead face down in his lap. He only saw her yesterday or maybe the day before yesterday, he thinks, but doesn't actually know. Something in him insists that it doesn't matter when he last saw her. There's a gripping sensation somewhere in his chest and it has him gasping for breath.

( _ **She had been good, not perfect, but good. She had lasted longer than most before withering.**_ )

Eddie wants to do nothing, wants to sit and mourn and get his breathing under control. He'll be arrested. There's no other option, really. Security is coming and he's one man against dozens of guards. 

( _ **Get up**_. _**Run**_.)

It stings, though, that he's only delayed the end results of his trip to the bridge.

( _ **No**_. _**Get up**_. _**Run**_.)

It burns Eddie that nothing is going to come from throwing his life away.

( _ **Precisely**_. _**Now get up**_. _**Run**_.)

His eyes shift and water ( _ **need to see**_ ), his muscles itch and spasm ( _ **need to move**_ ), and every part of him feels dense with foreign wants and desires ( _ **need me and you**_ , _**need we and us**_ ).

( _ **We need to go**_.)

He needs to go.

( _ **Yes**_!)

So he stands up and bolts for the door he came through. He doesn’t think of how he’s left Maria, doesn’t wonder what will become of her, can’t know that she will be missed. Those thoughts aren’t for him, they’re for later, for Eddie.

( _ **Think later**_ , _**run now**_. _**Go left**_. _**Now**_ , _**straight**_. _**Right**_.)

The building is a maze. He doesn’t remember paying attention to the twists and turns on his way in, assuming that leaving would be as simple as coming. But something in his brain knows the way out, somehow, and he sprints down corridors and skids around corners with the surety of ( _ **reviewed memories**_ ) an employee.

( _ **You remember more than you know**_.)

His escape goes well until the ( _ **humans**_ ) security gets their bearings and catches up to him. He’s ( _ **weak**_ ) not incapable of fighting, but his opponents are armed and armored while he is not. It would be foolish to approach them, foolish to do anything but turn around.

( _ **And get lost**_? _**You only know one route**_.)

But he’ll get lost, go back to the lab and get ( _ **trapped**_! _**restrained**_! _**contained**_!) taken into custody.

( _ **You can do it**_. _**I can help**_.)

Suddenly, he feels like it might be possible. He can’t fight them directly--he’s foolish not stupid--but maybe he could get around them. The more he thinks about it ( _ **momentum**_ , _**trajectory**_ , _**strength**_ , _**resistance**_ ) in the moment he falters before them, the more reasonable it seems.

( _ **Yes**_. _**We can do it**_.)

So he charges, jumps, rebounds, and continues onward. He’s so caught up in his success that he thinks nothing of plowing into and through a door and a fence. Then he’s in a twilight forest and everything is open before him. Everything is possible because he is free now.

He still needs to get away.

( _ **Correct**_.)

So he runs. They chase.

( _ **Enough**_. _**You are tiring**_. _**Hide**_.)

There’s nowhere to hide.

( _ **Yes there is**_. _**Up**_.)

No. Absolutely not. He refuses.

( _ **Yes**_.)

It takes his limbs from him. Takes his body, senses, and self. 

( _no_ )

It climbs up a tree and doesn’t seem to care about the cuts, scrapes, and bruises that result. At the top, it looks down at the ( _security guards_ ) humans as they scurry below, never thinking to look up. It breathes with his lungs like it’s not used to atmosphere, furrowing his face with short puffing exhalations.

( _no_ )

A few moments later, it decides that they are safe enough and retreats deep into his body where almost nothing can reach it.

( _ **Tired**_.)

Eddie surfaces completely for the first time since Maria died on top of him and realizes where he is if not exactly how he got there. 

-

Eddie died, or maybe he’s dying, but either way he doesn’t have much left in him. He’s dying empty, run through with an enemy's blade, and he’s glad that at least he isn’t taking Venom with him. It’ll keep fighting out of spite, Eddie thinks, even if it doesn’t like humans beyond him and maybe Anne. Venom will fight for what could have been.

He can at least die knowing that he tried, and that Venom will keep trying.

Consciousness leaves Eddie and he wilts against the cold metal of the launch platform. Venom finds him seconds later and refuses to let him go.

It suffuses his body and engulfs his form. His heart is split in two, his whole chest cavity is actually, and there is so much to repair that Venom cannot focus.

It starts with the blood. Cilia form in the vessel walls and wave the blood through the arteries and veins. It absorbs and diffuses oxygen directly into the capillary network in his unmoving lungs. Nerves spark and Venom makes connections along Eddie’s severed spinal cord. His brain staggers back to awareness. Venom envelops his face as he blinks in confused disorientation, and realization dawns on him as it covers the last of his skin.

( _get up_. _you have to stop them_.)

Venom cannot stop them, it has to repair him. There is no point to anything if Eddie is not there. It can fight after he has recovered, he is too precious for it to do anything else.

( _no_. _you have to stop them while you can_. _before there’s too many_.)

If he thinks the rocket should be stopped he should do it himself while it repairs him. He has as much access to it as it has access to him.

( _okay_. _I can do that_. _Probably_.)

He stands them up and it frantically stabilizes his spine when the shift in position threatens to upset its tentative alignment.

( _We need to get this out_. _Are you ready_?)

It will have to be. 

He makes it pull the shard of foreign/unwanted/leader ( _of Riot_ ) out of him and out of it. Its perception of time slows as it fills in the wound with its own substance. He roars as it stitches the two halves of his heart together, patches the gaps in his lungs, and cements his bones into place. 

( _Let’s go._ )

He crouches, it leaps, and they both land on the launch scaffolding.

Vicious joy wraps them both as it climbs and he plans. Together they can do whatever they want, and what they want right now is to succeed. They want to win and rub their victory in Riot and Drake’s shared face.

So they turn Drake’s taunting back on him and they pierce the rocket’s fuel tank and they win.

For a brief exhilarating moment they’re together in their victory. They can do anything they want and nothing can stop them.

Then they start falling. They realize that together they will die.

As they catch fire, Venom decides that Eddie cannot be allowed to die, that everything is pointless if Eddie dies. If he dies then it had no reason to stop the invasion, there will be no one for it to explore this ugly planet alongside, there will be no one to share itself with.

It flares out to slow Eddie’s fall, and Eddie wonders at what it’s doing.

It says goodbye, and Eddie denies it, clinging to Venom with all of his remaining strength. 

-

Eventually, after everything, they wake up together, each aware of the other in the same way that a person knows where their hands are.

( _ **hello**_?)

There’s no sudden realization that blooms from suspicion, no words, and no acknowledgement. They’re just together, mixed in with each other and unwilling to separate. For a while, they rest in each other’s presence

( _you’re okay_.)

Eddie had made plans the night before to spend the morning writing, but now they have no intentions of following through on that plan.

( _ **yes**_.)

Instead they move in concert through the steps of Eddie's morning. They take a warm, languid shower washing the sleep away and marvelling at the feeling of hot water sluicing over their body. After, Venom sheets the water from their skin and Eddie dresses them in his softest clothes. Their breakfast is bacon and way too many eggs. It eats some of their food raw and Eddie doesn’t do anything but smile and fill their blood with tasty neurotransmitters.

They spend the rest of their morning wandering by the piers, people watching. It’s a weekday and the crowds are as thin as they ever will be in a port city as large as San Francisco. Sunlight glimmers on the surface of the bay and the two of them spend hours wrapped in each other surrounded in turn by constant murmur of humanity.

It brings a new appreciation to both of them. These are the people he would have died for, and this is the world it had glimpsed from the top of the network building. The air isn’t quite as bogged down with exhaust as it is deeper in the city and it tastes good in their lungs as they inhale. They exhale heavily, satisfied.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Eddie says to it eventually.

_**Hungry,**_ Venom replies, but in their mind it shoves all of the awe, and joy, and satisfaction, and happiness that it never thought it would get to have at him.

“Yeah, yeah,” Eddie smiles and agrees. “I’m meeting up with Annie for coffee, so we can stop by Mrs. C’s after, okay?”

_**Alright,**_ it agrees, and Eddie can feel its pleased warmth under his sternum.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, comments and kudos are very appreciated! 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](https://bakageta.tumblr.com/) if you want to say hey.


End file.
